Kristensen, A. et al. Plasmonic colour generation. Nat. Rev. Mater. 2, 16088 (2016).
Holsteen, A. L., Raza, S., Fan, P., Kik, P. G. & Brongersma, M. L. Purcell effect for active tuning of light scattering from semiconductor optical antennas. Science 358, 1407–1410 (2017).
Vynck, K. et al. The visual appearances of disordered optical metasurfaces. Nat. Mater. 21, 1035–1041 (2022).
Weyrich, T., Peers, P., Matusik, W. & Rusinkiewicz, S. Fabricating microgeometry for custom surface reflectance. ACM Trans. Graph. 28, 1–6 (2009).
Allen, J. J., Mäthger, L. M., Barbosa, A. & Hanlon, R. T. Cuttlefish use visual cues to control three-dimensional skin papillae for camouflage. J. Comp. Physiol. A 195, 547–555 (2009).
Allen, J. J., Bell, G. R. R., Kuzirian, A. M. & Hanlon, R. T. Cuttlefish skin papilla morphology suggests a muscular hydrostatic function for rapid changeability. J. Morphol. 274, 645–656 (2013).
Kelman, E. J., Baddeley, R. J., Shohet, A. J. & Osorio, D. Perception of visual texture and the expression of disruptive camouflage by the cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 274, 1369–1375 (2007).
Barbosa, A. et al. Cuttlefish camouflage: the effects of substrate contrast and size in evoking uniform, mottle or disruptive body patterns. Vis. Res. 48, 1242–1253 (2008).
Song, M. et al. Versatile full-colour nanopainting enabled by a pixelated plasmonic metasurface. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 71–78 (2023).
Kolle, M. & Lee, S. Progress and opportunities in soft photonics and biologically inspired optics. Adv. Mater. 30, 1702669 (2018).
Walish, J. J., Kang, Y., Mickiewicz, R. A. & Thomas, E. L. Bioinspired electrochemically tunable block copolymer full color pixels. Adv. Mater. 21, 3078–3081 (2009).
Cencillo-Abad, P., Franklin, D., Mastranzo-Ortega, P., Sanchez-Mondragon, J. & Chanda, D. Ultralight plasmonic structural color paint. Sci. Adv. 9, eadf7207 (2023).
Sterl, F., Herkert, E., Both, S., Weiss, T. & Giessen, H. Shaping the color and angular appearance of plasmonic metasurfaces with tailored disorder. ACS Nano 15, 10318–10327 (2021).
Agreda, A. et al. Tailoring iridescent visual appearance with disordered resonant metasurfaces. ACS Nano 17, 6362–6372 (2023).
Pikul, J. H. et al. Stretchable surfaces with programmable 3D texture morphing for synthetic camouflaging skins. Science 358, 210–214 (2017).
Kim, J., Hanna, J. A., Byun, M., Santangelo, C. D. & Hayward, R. C. Designing responsive buckled surfaces by halftone gel lithography. Science 335, 1201–1205 (2012).
Wang, Q., Gossweiler, G. R., Craig, S. L. & Zhao, X. Cephalopod-inspired design of electro-mechano-chemically responsive elastomers for on-demand fluorescent patterning. Nat. Commun. 5, 4899 (2014).
Ohzono, T., Suzuki, K., Yamaguchi, T. & Fukuda, N. Tunable optical diffuser based on deformable wrinkles. Adv. Opt. Mater. 1, 374–380 (2013).
Pratakshya, P. et al. Octopus-inspired deception and signaling systems from an exceptionally-stable acene variant. Nat. Commun. 14, 8528 (2023).
Kim, J., Yoon, J. & Hayward, R. C. Dynamic display of biomolecular patterns through an elastic creasing instability of stimuli-responsive hydrogels. Nat. Mater. 9, 159–164 (2010).
Zhang, M. et al. Micro- and nanofabrication of dynamic hydrogels with multichannel information. Nat. Commun. 14, 8208 (2023).
Oh, J. et al. Dynamic multimodal holograms of conjugated organogels via dithering mask lithography. Nat. Mater. 20, 385–394 (2021).
Dai, C., Wang, Z., Shi, Y., Li, Z. & Li, Z. Scalable hydrogel-based nanocavities for switchable meta-holography with dynamic color printing. Nano Lett. 22, 9990–9996 (2022).
Guvendiren, M., Burdick, J. A. & Yang, S. Kinetic study of swelling-induced surface pattern formation and ordering in hydrogel films with depth-wise crosslinking gradient. Soft Matter 6, 2044–2049 (2010).
Morin, S. A. et al. Camouflage and display for soft machines. Science 337, 828–832 (2012).
Lassaline, N. et al. Optical Fourier surfaces. Nature 582, 506–510 (2020).
Lu, J. et al. Nano-achiral complex composites for extreme polarization optics. Nature 630, 860–865 (2024).
Chaudhary, N. et al. Electron beam induced modifications in electrical properties of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) films. Vacuum 152, 243–247 (2018).
Doshi, S. et al. Direct electron beam patterning of electro-optically active PEDOT:PSS. Nanophotonics 13, 2271–2280 (2024).
Wehner, M. et al. An integrated design and fabrication strategy for entirely soft, autonomous robots. Nature 536, 451–455 (2016).
Li, Q. et al. Metasurface optofluidics for dynamic control of light fields. Nat. Nanotechnol. 17, 1097–1103 (2022).
Davies, H. The reflection of electromagnetic waves from a rough surface. Proc. IEE IV Inst. Monogr. 101, 209–214 (1954).
Schröder, S. et al. Modeling of light scattering in different regimes of surface roughness. Opt. Express 19, 9820–9835 (2011).
Matusik, W. et al. Printing spatially-varying reflectance. ACM Trans. Graph. 28, 1–9 (2009).
Tan, S. J. et al. Plasmonic color palettes for photorealistic printing with aluminum nanostructures. Nano Lett. 14, 4023–4029 (2014).
Jung, C. et al. Disordered-nanoparticle–based etalon for ultrafast humidity-responsive colorimetric sensors and anti-counterfeiting displays. Sci. Adv. 8, eabm8598 (2022).
Rossi, S. et al. Dynamically tuneable reflective structural coloration with electroactive conducting polymer nanocavities. Adv. Mater. 33, 2105004 (2021).
Cormier, S., Ding, T., Turek, V. & Baumberg, J. J. Actuating single nano-oscillators with light. Adv. Opt. Mater. 6, 1701281 (2018).
Duan, X., Kamin, S. & Liu, N. Dynamic plasmonic colour display. Nat. Commun. 8, 14606 (2017).
Pappu, R., Recht, B., Taylor, J. & Gershenfeld, N. Physical one-way functions. Science 297, 2026–2030 (2002).
Kim, S.-U. et al. Broadband and pixelated camouflage in inflating chiral nematic liquid crystalline elastomers. Nat. Mater. 21, 41–46 (2022).
Dingler, C., Walter, R., Gompf, B. & Ludwigs, S. In situ monitoring of optical constants, conductivity, and swelling of PEDOT:PSS from doped to the fully neutral state. Macromolecules 55, 1600–1608 (2022).
Doshi, S. et al. Electrochemically mutable soft metasurfaces. Nat. Mater. 24, 205–211 (2025).
Ceballos, A. C., MacWilliams, K. P., Prescop, T. A. & Loewen, R. J. Full-wafer, maskless patterning with sub-50nm resolution and large depth-of-focus enabled by multicolumn electron beam lithography. In Novel Patterning Technologies 2024 Vol. 12956 213–217 (SPIE, 2024).
Zheng, Y.-Q. et al. Monolithic optical microlithography of high-density elastic circuits. Science 373, 88–94 (2021).
Doshi, S. et al. Thermal processing creates water-stable PEDOT:PSS films for bioelectronics. Adv. Mater. 37, 2415827 (2025).
Heikenfeld, J. et al. Electrofluidic displays using Young–Laplace transposition of brilliant pigment dispersions. Nat. Photonics 3, 292–296 (2009).
Oostra, D. J. in E-Paper Displays (ed. Yang, B.-R.) 197–224 (Wiley, 2022).
Koh, A. et al. A soft, wearable microfluidic device for the capture, storage, and colorimetric sensing of sweat. Sci. Transl. Med. 8, 366ra165 (2016).
Sherrington, I. & Smith, E. H. The significance of surface topography in engineering. Precis. Eng. 8, 79–87 (1986).
Chen, C. S., Mrksich, M., Huang, S., Whitesides, G. M. & Ingber, D. E. Geometric control of cell life and death. Science 276, 1425–1428 (1997).
Ma, Y. et al. Remote control over underwater dynamic attachment/detachment and locomotion. Adv. Mater. 30, 1801595 (2018).
Gopinathan, K. A., Mishra, A., Mutlu, B. R., Edd, J. F. & Toner, M. A microfluidic transistor for automatic control of liquids. Nature 622, 735–741 (2023).
Gluschke, J. G. et al. Integrated bioelectronic proton-gated logic elements utilizing nanoscale patterned Nafion. Mater. Horiz. 8, 224–233 (2021).
Liu, Z. et al. A three-dimensionally architected electronic skin mimicking human mechanosensation. Science 384, 987–994 (2024).
Doshi, S. AFM data for “Soft photonic skins with dynamic texture and color control”. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17347008 (2025).

